Gone Magazine

The logical explanation was, of course, that we were hearing an animal in the leaves and brush of the woods.  Logic, however, does not often come into the mind of an eleven year old.  Ruled by impulse and imagination, I knew that there was someone in the woods who was out to get me, and I acted accordingly; firing my cap gun with enthusiasm and conviction.

The sound of the footsteps in the leaves, growing fainter, convinced Frank and me that we were safe.  We sat and discussed what we had just witnessed with each other, in an almost editorial fashion.  Excitedly reporting facts we knew the other had just witnessed, punctuated with curse words of all shapes and sizes.  In the manner of adolescence we talked with fervor, and over each other’s words as the adrenaline generated by our experience wore off.  We settled down after awhile, finished our wine and went to sleep.

At about nine in the morning we rode out, sore from our nights sleep on the hard asphalt.    The trail went on, but not like before.  Forests and suburbs were replaced with strip malls and row houses.  We had arrived in Arlington and rode off the trail on Gallows Road.  We rode through the outskirts of the city, taking a left onto Idylwood Road and then headed down Old Dominion Road deeper into the city of Arlington.  We broke off Old Dominion where it intersects Glebe Road and headed toward Wilson Boulevard then took that to the Key Bridge and crossed into Georgetown.

We had made it to D.C.

Not familiar with our surroundings, we decided to stop at a gas station to snag a map and some candy bars.  I ran diversion; being younger I was able to solicit more sympathy from our marks.  I let the air out of my front tire and went into the small gas station and in a slightly panicked tone, I asked the attendant for help.  The attendant walked me over to the air pump and helped me refill my tire while Frank went inside to steal a map and some snacks.

After eating and plotting a route up M Street, we stopped at a Sunny’s Surplus store.  As we walked into the store, we could tell we were in for a challenge.  The clerk eyed us with scrutiny and suspicion as we passed, but didn’t offer help or assistance of any kind.  The store itself was a labyrinth of isles between glass cases and clothing displays which provided ample cover for our misdeeds. Noting the convex mirrors in every corner and realizing that the focal points of these mirrors were set for average adults, we were happy to discover that we were little more than distorted blobs on the outer edges of most of them.  This in mind, we proceeded to steal nun chucks, throwing stars and knives.   Frank at one time, so bold, fished a throwing star out of a narrow slot in a locked case with one of the knives he had lifted off the shelf not a moment before.  Again, we walked out with no incident, not realizing that the trouble would’ve been much different had we been caught.  The people there did not look friendly.

We rode on and met up with a kid named Mickey in a random suburban park.  We were instant friends and shared all that was left of what we’d stolen with him, whipping the throwing stars into a piece of ply-wood we had hung up on his fathers shed.  Mickey was 12, so we had a lot in common.  He was a bit of a trouble maker himself and we swapped stories of our adventures, both real and imagined, until mid afternoon.  When Mickey was called in to dinner, we said our goodbyes and rode off once more.

By this time it was about 5pm and we debated on what to do next.  We rode by a strip mall and detoured through the parking lot.  A movie theater there was showing “The Twilight Zone” and Frank and I decided to sneak in to watch it.  I sat and watched, horrified, as Dan Aykroyd (playing an ambulance driver) playfully asked his partner; “Hey, you wanna see something really scary?” only to rip his human mask off, revealing a hideous snarling monster who proceeded to devour the EMT in the passenger seat.  It freaked me right the hell out, Frank too, but we watched the entire movie anyway.

After the film, we walked out to our bikes.  We had about an hour to find a place to camp before it got dark and the stupidity of seeing a film under these circumstances occurred to me as we rode off.  I winced at the thought of it.

With this in mind we rode a few blocks north of the mall where we encountered a rather large group of thuggish looking children.  We got off our bikes and spoke with them guardedly, sensing that these were not the typical suburban kids we were accustomed to.  Attempting to be friendly, we showed them our throwing stars and knives, and one by one, they disappeared with them.  We closed our packs when we realized what was going on and turned back to our bikes to leave, nervously complaining about getting in trouble for being late to dinner.  A very large child of maybe 15 or 16 ran ahead of me and picked my bike up over his head and, looking at me, screamed “Watch!”.  Confused, I wondered what it was he wanted me to watch, so I asked him.  He answered by screaming ‘WATCH’ again.  One of his buddies, feigning genuine concern for my situation, informed me that this boy was insane and he wanted the watch on my wrist.  I made a personal note of how fortunate an insane teenager must be to have his own personal translator.

**I need to interject here that the watch on my wrist was not spectacular.  Not valuable in the least, it was a cheap Timex which I had taken the rubber wrist band off of and replaced with a wicked cool leather one that was wider than the watch itself and adorned with snaps and studs.  This watch may have had no monetary value, but it made up for that by being the coolest thing ever.**

I refused to give it up, swearing it was a gift from my brother who had since died in a terrible forest fire.  I lied further to say that it was the only thing I had left to remember him by.  I was really hamming it up for this guy, I wanted to keep my watch so much I was willing to risk life and limb for it.  Weather he fell for my sob story or just got tired of holding my bike over his head (Huffy’s were very heavy), I’ll never know.  He threw my bike down and stormed off, still appearing quite insane, playing his part convincingly as he walked down the sidewalk and away from us.  There were only a few kids left now and we got on our bikes and rode off with no words to them, and no further incident.

It stung to be swindled so aggressively and expertly.  These kids played by different rules and the loss we suffered bruised our ego’s tremendously.  For the hour or so, we spoke only when deciding on our route.
As we rode NE, the inner city cluster once again became strip malls and row houses, which then became forests and suburbs.  The suburbs looked much the same north east of DC as they did south west of the city, which comforted me greatly… I was back in my element.  By this time it was well after dark and we stopped at a well lit office park to find a place to camp.  We found an empty dumpster that didn’t smell too bad by a parking garage and made camp inside.  Still worked up from the days travel and uncomfortable in the metal dumpster, we set out into the parking garage to see what we could heist.  We tried the doors of the few cars that were there and found one open.  We rifled through the center console and glove box, finding nothing of interest save for the trunk release.  In the trunk were blankets and air mattresses.  We stared at each other in amazement, someone surely was watching over us.  Our dumpster-fort was now very cozy and we talked and planned for the days to come.

As we examined our map we noted that getting to Buffalo from where we were would be difficult considering we had to avoid interstates the entire way.  With the optimism that comes with youthful ignorance, (making plans is easy when you don’t know what you can’t do) we chose a tangled web of back roads which would make even the most experienced of guides slap his forehead in confusion (and probably disgust).  The route would take us first to Baltimore, then north west through every small town from Smallwood, Maryland to Springbrook, New York.

We still had candy and cigarettes and snacked and smoked until we finally fell asleep under the low buzz of parking lot lamps.

Two runaway kids in a dumpster-fort headed for Buffalo.  Our plan, no matter how optimistic, was proceeding within the confines of our extremely vague guidelines, and by our estimate, we’d be in Buffalo in four or five days.  In reality, Buffalo is approximately three hundred-fifty miles from Baltimore and we were averaging about twenty miles a day.  In reality, it would take us more than two weeks to get to our destination if we could ride the interstates, which we couldn’t.  Given the course we had chosen it would be more like three of four weeks.

In the morning we woke to the thunderous sound of the trash truck coming for the daily rounds and slowly, with reality sluggishly materializing before my sleepy eyes, I almost light heartedly realized that we were in a dumpster.  I almost laughed but decided to swear loudly instead.  Frank already had his head out of the top of the dumpster and was waving frantically at the driver who saw him, thankfully.

After a short confrontation delivered by a very confused trash collector, we rode off quickly, shouting that our parents knew exactly where we were over our shoulder as if the trash-man was foolish to ask such a ridiculous question.  Our deftness was fueled by the fact that the dumpster we were in was filled with recently stolen items from a parking garage only a few dozen feet away.