Lost and Found

Jeremy Bolt started the long walk back to the logging camp oblivious to the green, leafy signs of early spring around him. School today had been an ordeal, but then it had been all year. At least it was Thursday, and only one more day before the weekend. He didn't mind the actual classes so much. He did well enough with his lessons, especially geography and literature. But when the time came to read aloud or recite, he found himself sliding further and further down in his seat, hoping not to be noticed.

There was a new teacher in Seattle this year, Miss Essie Halliday, and she was kind enough to Jeremy, and understood that his stuttering made him painfully self-conscious and shy; but she made a point of treating all her students equally, and she didn't tolerate poor posture, either. So she called on him occasionally, and none of the other boys dared tease him in her presence. They waited until recess or after school. And since Jeremy's older brother and self-appointed protector, Joshua, finished school last spring, they now considered the fourteen-year-old an easy target.

It had started as small things, mimicking him from across the schoolyard, making faces and laughing behind him when he took his turn reading the lesson, and had progressed to more malicious conduct, such as stealing his lunch and hiding his coat. It made him angry as well as embarrassed, but he had heard his oldest brother, Jason, lecture Joshua often on how school was for learning, not fighting, and he knew such behavior would be frowned on, to say the least.

With the new year, it got even worse. Miss Halliday had decided just after Christmas to hold a Family Night in the spring, a sort of open house when all the families could come and see what the students had been working on all year. Everyone was expected to participate: the younger students were preparing decorations and choosing the best of their work to be put on display, and the older students were each expected to prepare a project on a topic that interested them. Not only was Jeremy terrified of speaking in front of a room full of people, but everyone in Seattle knew it. This gave the tormentors even more ammunition, and as Family Night approached, Jeremy became increasingly panicked about it.

Today, he had finally reached the end of his tolerance. Several of the boys decided to make a lunchtime game of sitting near him and carrying on all conversation with the worst stutters they could possibly manage. He moved away from them repeatedly, but they kept following him, and finally he had had enough. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had spun around and punched Harry Kinkade right in the nose.

Stunned silence descended on the schoolyard, as did Miss Halliday, who had stepped out to call her little class back from lunch in time to see the whole thing. After pulling Harry to his feet and admonishing him to find his handkerchief and see to his bloody nose, she turned to Jeremy, who was every bit as bewildered as everyone else, and he thought he saw disappointment in her dark eyes.

"I'll see you after school, Mr. Bolt," she said pointedly, and then began herding the others into the schoolhouse. Jeremy considered running, but only for an instant; and before he could have made the attempt, Miss Halliday caught him by the elbow and escorted him in herself.

He had stayed after school, staring at the floor and mumbling what he hoped were appropriate responses to her lecture; he wasn't really paying attention until she extended a folded piece of paper to him and held it there until he took it.

It was a note for Jason, now tucked into Jeremy's arithmetic book as he headed up the mountain trail. He had carefully avoided telling his brothers about the trouble at school, at first wanting to handle it himself – but how do you handle a bully? And most of what Harry and Jack said, and convinced the others to say, was true; Jeremy did stutter, and trying to respond to their taunts only made it worse, which only made them laugh harder. He did sound stupid, he couldn't get two words out without tripping over them, and he couldn't even keep people from making fun of him about it. But his brothers thought everything was fine at school, and in the end, he'd decided to keep it that way.

Now, though, he would have to explain it. He was too honest to just "lose" the note; besides, as awful as it was going to be to tell Jason and Josh what was going on, it would be a million times worse to have Miss Halliday come up to the camp and tell them herself. Maybe he could just wait until after dinner. Then the two hired loggers who worked for Jason would have left for the night, and he'd only have to tell the whole humiliating story to his brothers. Until then, Jeremy knew he could lose himself in his chores around camp, and forget about school for a while.

A rustle in the bushes alongside the trail drew his attention from thoughts of the evening ahead, and he slowed his pace and peered warily into the shadowy underbrush down the hill to his right. He tried to remember if he'd heard any stories of bears in the area this spring. They should be coming out of hibernation now, and foraging for food; but he couldn't recall any such tales. Perhaps it was a deer, then. It sounded too large for a rabbit ….

The mystery was solved when a familiar voice came out of the shadows, and the creature revealed itself to be no more dangerous than a bear, but certainly no less so.

"J-J-J-Jeremy!"

Great. It was Harry. Disgusted, Jeremy turned back up the trail and started walking. He didn't want to get into this again.

"W-W-What's the m-m-matter, J-J-Jeremy?" called a second voice – Jack, Jeremy realized.

"He's a b-b-big ch-ch-chicken!" came Harry's voice again. Both boys came out of hiding to catch up with Jeremy, flanking him on either side. "Good thing Miss Halliday came to your rescue, J-J-Jeremy. Otherwise I would have plastered you."

Privately, Jeremy doubted Harry could manage that alone. Jeremy was somewhat smaller than the older boy, but helping out around the camp – as a "logger's apprentice," Jason called it – for the last four years had helped make him stronger than most other boys at school. Harry's family had come out from the East last summer to farm, and while farming was hard work, it wasn't logging. But Harry wasn't alone; he always had Jack or someone else with him, and that made all the difference. Jeremy kept walking, refusing to look at either of them.

"Did you like staying after school?" Jack continued the taunting. "I think he's s-sweet on M-Miss H-H-H-Halliday, Harry."

Harry slapped Jeremy's shoulder roughly, and Jeremy stumbled a little, but kept ignoring them.

"Nah," he replied. "Even J-J-Jeremy couldn't be sweet on that four-eyed old maid."

Jeremy stopped cold in the middle of the trail. Miss Halliday did wear glasses, but he thought she was kind of pretty behind her wire frames, and she wasn't very old at all. Furthermore, Jeremy had learned long ago, through personal experience, that you couldn't judge people on outward appearances. She had never been anything but helpful and kind to any of her students since she came to Seattle, even the two on the trail with Jeremy now. And besides, that was no way to talk about a lady.

He turned to face Harry. "T-Take that back."

Harry grinned at finally getting a rise out of his prey. "W-W-What was that, J-J-Jeremy?"

"T-T-Take that b-back..." He wanted to say more – a lot more – but knew better than to try to talk to these two.

"He is sweet on her!" Jack crowed, delighted.

"He'd have to be," Harry replied, laughing. "No one else would want J-J-Jeremy anyway!"

Suddenly, he was as angry as he had been in the schoolyard that afternoon, and more so. He forgot the note for Jason, his chores, his homework, everything. He started for Harry, and the two boys ran from him, laughing as they dashed off the trail and down the mountainside. Jeremy dropped his books and lunch pail at the edge of the trail and chased after them. They couldn't get away from him here – this was Bridal Veil Mountain, his home – and he'd be able to find them, wherever they went, and make them take back every mean thing they'd ever said about anyone.

He could see them up ahead, hurdling a random stack of fallen pines and calling to him: "J-J-J-Jeremy!" They disappeared into the underbrush, still laughing; intent on catching them, Jeremy jumped onto the uppermost of the pines, pushing himself off the other side.

He realized something was wrong immediately; his foot slipped on wet bark, and the big tree trunk began to roll under him. Unable to stop his forward momentum, he fell facedown on the forest floor, the wind knocked out of him and a huge weight coming down heavily on his legs.

After a moment, he was able to catch his breath, and he pushed himself up on his elbows and strained to see what had him pinned, brushing pine needles out of his face as he looked over his shoulder. The pine trunk from the top of the little pile had rolled down onto his lower legs. He didn't think he was hurt – most of the tree's weight seemed to be supported by something else – but he couldn't pull his legs out. What if Harry and Jack came back and found him here, trapped and unable to get away from them or defend himself? Wiggling around, he managed to get his left shoulder under him and pull that arm around in front, then bent at the waist and tried to lift the tree using his hands. As it became increasingly obvious that this method wouldn't work, he began to panic in earnest, struggling until he collapsed breathlessly on the damp leaves and pine needles beneath him. Frantically, he tried again, with the same result, and after a few more attempts, he gave it up as useless.

All right, get a hold of yourself. What would Jason do? Giving that a few minutes' thought while he caught his breath again, he looked around the immediate area. Spotting a fallen branch behind him, he reached back with his right arm to snag it. It was hard to get to, since he couldn't roll onto his back with his legs pinned, but he finally managed to get his fingertips around it and pull it over to him. Jamming one end under the tree trunk, he started lifting. The trunk shifted a bit, and he tried harder, preparing to pull himself free at the first opportunity – and the branch broke, the sudden lack of resistance pulling his left elbow out from under him and dropping him onto his shoulder as the trunk settled back into place.

Discouraged, he lay quietly for a while, thinking malevolent thoughts about turning this trunk into firewood. If this wasn't the stupidest thing he'd ever done, he couldn't think what was. Not only had he gotten into a fight at school, ensuring that Jason and Joshua would find out about the teasing; now he had gone chasing after the same boys who had provoked him before, and in the process gotten himself pinned under a tree.

He knew that when he didn't make it to camp by suppertime, his brothers would come looking for him. He couldn't remember how far off the trail he was, and he couldn't see it from here. He thought he was close enough to hear them when they called for him, though. He'd just have to make himself comfortable, since he was apparently not going anywhere for a few hours. He folded his arms across his chest and settled in to wait. A perfect ending to a perfectly awful day.

XXXX

Jason Bolt glared down the trail that led into town, willing the gathering twilight to produce his youngest brother. He could smell Joshua's stew simmering behind him, and coffee, as well. Before long it would be dark, and ordinarily he would be preparing to share an evening meal with his brothers, talking and laughing about things they had seen and done during the day. Then they would clear up and he and Josh would see to any repairs their logging equipment might need while Jeremy did his homework, and later Jason would look over the boy's lessons with him before they settled in for the night.

But tonight there was no Jeremy. True, he had been dragging in later and later, these last few weeks, but this was unusual in the extreme. Sighing his frustration, Jason turned and rejoined Josh by the fire in front of the tent that was their home during most of the logging season.

"He had better have a really good reason for this."

"Maybe he went to the cabin, instead," Josh suggested. The Bolt brothers kept a cabin closer to town, where they stayed during the winter months and when it was too cold or wet to live in camp.

Jason looked down at his brother where he crouched by the cook fire, stirring the stew. "Why on earth would he do a thing like that?"

Josh shrugged and studied the contents of his stewpot, carefully noncommittal. "Well, he hasn't been sleeping that well up here the last month or so; maybe he decided to try a different bed."

"He hasn't –" Jason stopped mid-sentence, settling slowly to a log-seat by the fire and staring blankly into the flames, feeling the familiar weight of being the oldest settle over him again. Leave it to Josh to see a problem he'd missed.

It was hard work, raising two teenage boys when not so long ago you were one yourself. He and Josh butted heads every few weeks, over the logging business, usually; and Jeremy seemed inclined to take just about anything you said to him too much to heart. It had been almost five years since Jonathan Bolt had died and left his sons on their own, and Jason was still learning. He knew that Josh responded best to reason, and could no longer be conned into following his older brother's lead, as he often was when they were children. And if all else failed, Jason knew he and Joshua could just yell at each other until they each got their point across and reached some kind of agreement. Jeremy, on the other hand, had always been a sensitive boy, which only became worse when their mother died and Jeremy suddenly began stuttering, and Jason still hadn't quite figured out how to parent him. It was Josh who usually looked out for Jeremy, alternately shielding him and prodding his younger brother through life.

"Do you know what's bothering him?" Jason asked after a moment, his tone much less confrontational than it had been a moment ago.

Josh shrugged again, shaking his head as he set down his ladle. "He hasn't said anything, and he dodges me when I try to ask. I thought about knocking him down and sitting on him 'til he spilled it …" he trailed off with a small smile; but when the mood didn't lift, he went on. "I think it's been going on since at least Christmas, though."

Jason looked up at him abruptly, startled. Christmas? How had he managed to miss that? He'd had his mind on his business and not on his brothers, where it belonged, that's how. But if he didn't keep his mind on the logging operation, how was he going to feed his brothers?

Mentally shaking off the self-recrimination, he rose and disappeared into the tent. When he stepped back out, shrugging on his jacket, Josh's coat and a lantern in hand, Josh was standing, looking at him expectantly. "Are we going somewhere?" he asked.

"Thought I might take a walk into town," Jason replied, lighting a twig in the fire and touching it to the lantern wick. Josh was already taking the stew off the fire and putting the lid on the pot.