“Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Ricky!” he said. “I won’t be bad!”
The pitch of his voice and open innocence of his face surprised me, and my first thought was that he was just a child of perhaps twelve. Then, as I got closer, I recognized his body shape and the wide, blunt features of his face: He was a young man with Down syndrome, probably closer to twenty.
“Don’t shoot me, okay?” His chest was heaving. “I won’t be bad!”
The sight of him broke my heart. His arms and face were badly scratched where branches had torn him, and his warding, supplicating hands were bleeding and dirt-smeared, probably from the fall he just took.
“Ricky,” I panted. “Your name is Ricky?”
“Yeah. I’m a really good guy!” He pronounced it without a d, “goo’guy.”
“Ricky, don’t be afraid of me.”
“Okay. Won’t be afraid,” he said, terrified.
“Where do you live?”
The corners of his mouth twitched down. “Got lost.”
“If you tell me where you live, I’ll take you home. Can you point in the direction you came from?”
He looked around, then back at me, shaking his head, disappointed in himself. “Got lost.”
I wanted to touch him, reassure him, but was afraid he’d spook and run again. “Why don’t you come with me? You’re all scratched up. I’ll take care of your scratches and then we’ll figure out where you live. Okay?”
I turned, beckoned him to follow, but he didn’t move.
“I don’t really have a gun,” I said. I tucked the tree guide into my belt and held my hands out to each side. “I was just scared when I first saw you, that’s why I said it.” My pulse was only now slowing.
“Okay,” he said.
We began picking our way up the slope. After another minute, he said, “Live with Grampa and Gramma now.”
“That’s good! We’ll get you back to them so they don’t worry about you. What are their names?”
“Grampa Homer is my grampa. He’s a really good guy.”
Homer, the patriarch of the Goslants—Ricky was his grandson, or some descendant at any rate, and now in my care.
“I know where Grampa Homer is,” I told him. “Let’s get you back there, okay?”
“Okay.”
I have always loved the look of people with Down syndrome. It is as if they’re a tribe or family of their own, living throughout the world, sibling-similar despite variations in the color of skin or hair or eyes. There’s something sturdy and trustworthy about them, these short, stalwart people, and those I’ve known have all been cheerful and touchingly appreciative of any chance to socialize. Their faces remain astonishingly unmarked by age, so I often assume they are younger—a family of perpetually youthful and innocent people. At the legal aid center, I got to know two teenagers with the syndrome: one unable to speak and needing accompaniment wherever she went, but physically affectionate; the other talkative, gregarious, and able to get around town on his own. Clearly, Ricky was more like the latter.
He didn’t have anything to say as we walked, so I filled in the silence. “I was out here learning the names of the trees.”
“Names of trees,” he said, bobbing his head.
“Do you know tree names?”
“Too many.” Shaking his head.
As we headed to my campsite, I introduced him to each type of tree and showed him the pictures in the manual; he was hugely pleased to see a photo of the bark or a leaf, and then, right next to the photo, the real thing. His face settled into a companionable smile, and he said the names after me: “Black pine. Yellow birch.”
At the edge of a more open spot, we came to a stand of young poplars—they’re the ones with the roundish leaves, pale green on top and silvery underneath. They are peculiar in that the leaves flutter in even the mildest breeze, and where most trees receive the wind in synchronous waves, each leaf of the poplar oscillates in its own rhythm. “These are poplars,” I told him.
He looked at them for a moment and then beamed. “Butterfly trees!”
And he was right: It was as if each tree were entirely covered with green butterflies, flapping their wings at different tempos. Since then, I have never thought of the poplar in any other way.
Back at camp, I warmed some water on my Coleman stove and washed his scratched arms. He winced at the sting, but he was relieved to discover that the wounds were not as big as they had looked when they were crusted with blood. I took extra care in sponging the scratches and bruises on his face, and when I was done I rubbed anti-itch cream on the fly bites on his neck and temples. He gratefully accepted a drink of cold water and a couple of fig bars, and by the time we started down to the farm we were good friends.
“How’d you get so lost?” I asked him. “You were a long way from Grampa’s house!” He’d been at least a mile away from the Goslants’ place, through rough country.
“Just got lost,” he mumbled, his face closing up.
“Were you … looking for something?”
He didn’t answer, but his expression showed that my questions upset him.
“Were you going somewhere?”
“Johnnie got mad,” he said.
“What do you mean he got mad?”
“Said I wasn’t a good guy, I was stupid, I should go away. He hit me. Then I got lost.” He brushed his cheek with one hand, and I realized that the bruises there were not from stumbles in the woods.
I didn’t respond, but this was another notch in the tally stick. I was increasingly beginning to dislike Johnnie.
Will’s car was just turning out of the driveway as we came to the end of my access track and onto the road, and when he saw us he stopped. He looked quizzically at me and dubiously at Ricky.
“This is Ricky,” I told him. “He got lost and needs to get back to his grampa’s house. Want to give us a lift?”
Will checked his
