I also needn’t have worried about ticks and mosquitoes. By the time we’d driven to the other side of the lake and were finally out in the woods, I’d been covered with so much spray that only bugs wearing gas masks could have gotten through. Howie, Chester, and I kept our distance from one another and the rest of the Monroes. It was hard to avoid the smell, though; in fact, I half expected the entire family to be picked up at any minute on charges of polluting the air.
“I don’t think anybody has ever been this way before,” Pete shouted out.
“A comforting thought,” I heard Chester mutter. I knew what Pete was saying wasn’t so, but I didn’t mention it then. I may not have done a lot of tracking in my life, but I knew enough to tell that someone had been this way before—and not so long before, either.
“Don’t worry, son,” Mr. Monroe shouted back.
“I’m not worried, Dad. I think it’s cool. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll get lost and I can save us.”
“I have a compass,” Toby said.
“I have a compass and a map,” Pete said. “And if anybody chokes I can do the Heimlich maneuver.”
“I hope that isn’t a requirement for one of your badges,” Mr. Monroe said.
Personally, I took Pete’s remark as a hopeful one. You have to eat before you can choke, after all.
Howie, meanwhile, didn’t seem to have a worry in the world. He was sniffing the air happily, ignoring the stench of insect repellent for the more delicious and inviting aromas in the air. “Smell those pine trees!” he cried. “Smell those wild flowers! Smell that smoke!”
Smoke?
Suddenly, Mrs. Monroe, who with Toby was in the lead, stopped in her tracks and pointed. “Look,” she called back to her husband.
Pete and Mr. Monroe ran to catch up with the others. The three of us were quick to follow.
“Someone’s camping over there by the lake,” Mrs. Monroe said. “They already have a fire going. I think we should head in that direction.”
“Oh, Mom,” Pete said, “we don’t want to make camp near somebody else. The whole idea of this is to go it alone.”
“No, the whole idea is to get through the night. So far, no one,” and she glanced at her husband’s bandaged hand, “has demonstrated a reassuring flair for survival.”
“We have Pete’s books,” Mr. Monroe said tentatively.
“Better than that,” said their oldest son. “You have Pete.”
“You haven’t earned that merit badge yet,” said Mrs. Monroe. “Look, I don’t want to argue about this. If no one else were around, I’d say let’s just pitch our tent wherever we end up. But the point is, there is someone else around, and I’ll bet they know a lot more about camping than we do.”
Pete and Toby looked to their father.
“Your mother is right,” he said. “It can’t hurt to have somebody nearby.”
“It can if that somebody is a homicidal maniac,” Chester whispered to me.
“Sshh,” I said, not wanting Howie to overhear.
Howie, however, had already run on ahead of us, sniffing at the ground as he went. When we caught up with him he asked, “Is this how you track, Uncle Harold? Am I doing it right?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Just put your nose to the ground and follow it.”
“Makes scents to me,” he said with a chuckle. “Get it, Uncle Harold? Get it, Pop? It makes scents to me.”
I chuckled back. Chester just rolled his eyes and commented, “Let’s hope you’ll still be laughing at midnight, Harold.”
Behind us, the Monroes were singing as they walked. It was a silly song about a bunny rabbit, one I hadn’t heard in a long time, and it got me thinking about Pete and Toby when they were little. But then, as I listened to the words, I started thinking about someone else.
“It’s too bad,” I remarked to Chester, “that Bunnicula couldn’t have come camping with us. He always gets left out of these adventures we have.”
“Yeah,” Howie said. “Just because he’s a rabbit, I don’t see why he has to stay home in his cage all the time.”
“Rabbits don’t understand camping trips,” Chester said. “If Bunnicula were here, he’d go brainlessly hopping this way and that, and the next thing you know, he’d be lost.”
“That would be terrible,” Howie said sadly.
“Darn right it would,” said Chester. “Can you just imagine him lost in the woods? I can see the headlines now—‘Evergreen Forest Turns White!’ ”
“Here we go again,” I said.
“Besides, a vampire rabbit,” Chester went on, “is the last thing we need with us on Saint George’s Day.”
“Saint George’s Day?” Howie asked. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly.
“Stop protecting the kid,” Chester said. And then, before I could say another word, he told Howie all about the evil spirits and the woods and midnight.
Howie’s eyes grew larger and larger and larger. “I want to go home,” he whimpered when Chester was through.
“Howie,” I said, “Chester is telling stories out of books. Nothing like that is going to happen here. There’s no evil in these woods. There is nothing to be scared of.”
“Oh, really?” said Chester, coming to a sudden halt.
Straight ahead of us, not ten feet away, were two men and a dog. One man was frying some fish over an open fire. I couldn’t see his face, but his hands made me think of spiders. The hairs rose a little along the back of my neck. They rose even higher when I glanced at the other man sitting on a rock nearby. His head was the shape of a potato, all lumpy and swollen. His right eye twitched. And in his hands he held a large knife. He wasn’t doing anything with it, just holding it. From time to time, he’d turn it over, and then he’d spit on the ground.
The dog, also potatolike, sat by his feet. He didn’t look as if he had the energy to spit. A long ribbon of drool hung from his lower lip, as much a part of him as the scar that ran across his jowl.
When the Monroes arrived right after us, the man by the fire looked up.
“Well, howdy,” he said. “You folks out camping?”
“We … we thought we’d camp over there,” Mrs. Monroe said, pointing to a sandy patch near the water’s edge. “That is, if you don’t mind.”
“Mind? Heck, no. We never do get to see people in these parts. I’m Bud. And that there is Spud.”
Spud, I thought. How fitting.
The Monroes introduced themselves and us. Spud looked everybody over, turned the knife in his hands, and spat on the ground.
“Nice-looking animals you got there,” Bud said, wiping his hands on the back of his jeans. “Yes’m. Nice looking. Now, you take Dawg, he’s seen better days. He cain’t help it, he’s been kicked around by life, and sometimes he jes gets downright mean and orn’ry. But he’s a good dawg, Dawg is.”
“That’s your dog’s name?” said Mr. Monroe. “Dog?”
“Dawg,” said Bud.
He flipped the fish in the frying pan. Spud spat. Dawg dragged himself to his feet and, drool and all, headed in our direction.
“He looks a little like Max,” I commented, trying to cheer myself by bringing to mind a friendly bulldog of our acquaintance.
“Yeah, the way a rattler looks like a garter snake. Happy Saint George’s Day,” Chester said, and the hairs continued to rise all the way down my back.