the defection

R.S. O’TOOLE

Tired from her long day as chaperone, Ms. Cullen mistakenly counted the two stacked backpacks with a blue windbreaker draped over them in the last row of the bus as the final boy in her headcount.

“All present and accounted for,” she told the driver, who started the bus and steered out of the parking lot of the educational replica Mohawk village, beginning the hour drive back to the city and the small boys’ school.

The wolf pelt was heavy and hot on Tom’s back as he laid hidden in the highest bunk in the longhouse. Its fur reminded him of his dog Macy: a collie and Labrador mix. It smelled like her too. He waited as long as he could before getting up, so he could be sure the bus heading back to school was safely gone. He couldn’t imagine the aftermath of his defection—the worry, tears, phone calls, and blame—and thought only of the beginning of his new life in the Mohawk village.

He wriggled slowly out from under the pelt and climbed down from the bunk. His black dress shoes were already off—he wouldn’t need them anymore—and he walked across the cold dirt floor in his socks. He’d make a pair of moccasins, somehow, if he ever needed them, but he didn’t think he would. They’d only crunch the leaves under his feet as he slunk through the woods, hunting birds and squirrels with a bow and quiver at his hip.

He went to the cold black firepit circled by smooth stones. There hadn’t been a fire in days. He knew a fire would end his freedom before it started, bringing the employees of the Mohawk village directly to him and sending him straight home. He sat crisscross in front of it, imitating a reflective moment.

The Lost Boys in his illustrated Peter Pan book had started all this. Their animal hides and furry hats were so different from his uniform’s stiff collar and sweater, which he wore almost every day. In school, they had been learning about the history of the Haudenosaunee, the local Mohawk Nation specifically. Ms. Cullen had focused on shrinking lands and unfair treaties with Europeans, while mentioning enough bows and arrows, lacrosse games, and wigwams to keep his and his classmates’ attentions. It had been a stroke of luck that the end-of-term field trip would be to the replica Mohawk village.

He loosened his tie, pulled it over his neck, and tightened it again above his ears, so the green tails stuck out from the side of his head and fell across his shoulder. It was a modification he and his friends sometimes made during recess and while waiting to be picked up after school before they each disappeared into their mothers’ SUVs. It was their costume of wildness as they played tag or cache-cache. It allowed them to run faster and laugh and shriek even louder. He stuck his fingers in the firepit and smudged char under his eyes.

The sky purpled in the gaps in the roof, and the air inside the longhouse grew colder. The dry, stuffy heat of the afternoon had gone, replaced with the cool of a spring evening. He sat very still and tried not to feel hungry for dinner. He wondered if anyone noticed he was missing and started looking for him, or if his disappearance had been little remarked and quickly forgotten. He thought of his friends saying “Tom? Tom who?” and his parents opening the door to his empty room in the morning and shrugging before shuffling down the hall to wake and coddle his little brother.

The cold of the ground radiated into his body, making him shiver. He climbed back into the bunk under the wolf pelt. He smelled the woody, sappy, piney smell of the tied-together branches. He curled up under the warm fur and thought of Macy lying next to him. He was okay with the forgetting and the shrugging—and even, he’d once assured himself, with the smaller share of his parents’ attention—but the thought of his dog sleeping at the foot of his bed, missing his presence and warmth, was harder to bear. He tried to fall asleep, turning over and over, until it felt useless, and he couldn’t take it any longer. Warm tears formed in his eyes. He bounded out from the bunk and charged through the scant light towards the door of the longhouse and into the cold evening.

A flashlight’s beam fell upon him.

“Help! I want to go home!” He rushed towards and wrapped his arms around the leg of the Mohawk village employee, just twenty-one, who was about to enter the longhouse after a full day leading tours for school kids, a long-awaited joint in his vest pocket.

 R.S. O'Toole studies on the M.A. in Writing program at the University of
Galway and attended the New England Young Writers' Conference.