White Pines Sing

I. The Pines

Theo Crane dug a hole in the ground using only her hands. She worked slowly, as if she had all the time in the world, as if she could enjoy the task set before her and there was no reason for her to hurry. When she finished, she marked it with several stones in the shape of a cross, and then retraced her steps back through the pines in total darkness.

***

Tyler had been at the Pines for three years, which was not long. He was sent to the camp when he was fourteen, a skinny, lost kid with no family and no future. The Pines were a last resort when he was too much for his parents to handle, when the state decided that he was ungovernable and beyond its help. It was enough to wake him up. His effort and loyalty to the program eventually earned him an assignment to the Night Owls. Tyler now spent three nights a week surveying the residence halls from an overwatch position at the edge of the pines. From here, he could descend quickly into the fields below and capture anyone fleeing before they reached the forest. From here, he and the Owls stopped runaways.

Most nights, in the early morning hours, he would see movement across the basin, when Kenna would leave her position and hike over to him. This was strictly forbidden but he never said anything. Kenna would lay down next to him and say what was on her mind, and he'd nod while keeping his eyes focused on the field below.

She often spoke about her future, about all the things she dreamt of doing once she was released. She would go back to Austin, she said, where she'd grown up. She'd reunite with her brother there, join his band, and together in the summer they'd play shows along the riverwalks at dusk. She talked about attending the university—her sister was tenured there—and said one day she'd work in nuclear physics, at a national lab. Maybe even Los Alamos or someplace back east.

Tyler heard so many versions of this story, it had a mythical quality to it by now. He didn't mind. She would go on for hours about how free and easy her life would soon be, and he would always listen to her. He listened because that's just what you did whenever Kenna wanted to talk. He listened even if he knew her stories were made up, and knew they were just dreams she'd devised to keep herself sane. Even though he knew that she had no such life waiting back in Austin and she probably never did.

Even if it was all true, even if she did have a life with her brother and his band back in Austin, and she could return to play drums and study to become a physicist, he knew it didn't matter. None of it did. He knew that neither of them were leaving the Pines soon.

One night, in the season, he waited and watched from his post like always. The frozen white pines stood sentinel around the camp, and the moonlight was brilliant on the basin floor. Every now and then, just like always, Kenna turned her head to look at him as she whispered. But something changed just after midnight, because she fell silent and Tyler noticed. When she turned to look at him next, he saw her face was strangely stark and alert. The moon made her hair look silver as she turned back around to concentrate.

"Something's down there," she said. "Next to the gate on the west-end."

Tyler looked out through his spotting scope and dialed in the focus on the gate. There was nothing unusual.

"Where?" he said.

She sat still with her hands in her lap and kept facing the gate. She was locked in.

"Where?"

...

"Kenna say something."

She grabbed his arm without looking back and pulled him up, and then she pointed down below at a steep embankment. He saw it this time. Two silhouettes were racing up the steep hill towards the treeline adjacent to their post. One of the them stumbled, pitched forward a few steps, and then he hit the ground. The other figure didn't stop, but accelerated as he disappeared into the forest. Tyler heard the two-way on his hip key up.

"Oh fuck he's gone", Cameron called over. They watched as Cameron now picked himself up off the ground and scrambled back towards the center of the camp. Kenna shook her head and Tyler started gathering his equipment. Cameron's voice came over the radio again. He said, "This kid got behind me, he was running west from the gate. Don't know if anyone saw it. I think he's really gone, he's in the pines now."

Tyler and Kenna figured the runaway was some distance into the forest, so instead of chasing him, they started back towards the west-end barn. When they reached it, they went down the checklist and retrieved another set of radios and flashlights and passed them off to the Owls from A and B halls. "He's gone", Cameron said when they saw him. "I barely saw him pass the breakpoint, and then he was just...just gone."

Kenna was the shift lead, and so she took authority and laid out a large map on a table. The Owls circled around inside the barn as she outlined all of their potential coverage areas. When she was finished, she took Tyler and Cameron and led them back towards the treeline where the kid had disappeared. An all-call had been made earlier by one of the other Owls, whom Tyler didn't know, and he could now see the adult staff arriving at the camp's parking lot.

As they entered the forest, Cameron was still rambling to Tyler and Kenna and swatting around at the pine trees. He told both of them that he had been very alert. He told both of them about how closely he had been watching his sector. He said the kid shot out of the Hall C building and ran straight past him, and he must've knocked Cameron down with something but dammit he wasn't sure what. He said, "I got the wind knocked out of me. You know? And then I looked back up but I couldn't see anything." Cameron just kept repeating, "Gone gone gone." Like it was profound.