We Grow Up
Garrett Wenger
This story is about a child who is undergoing an otherworldly mutation, as well as bitter nostalgia, the people and places we leave behind, and the understanding (or lack thereof) we find in our friends as children.
Swimming at the old rock bridge is what I think of when I remember Wolfgang. Summer was hotter back then, and he would agree I think. Heavy heat that wears on you like a hand on your back, pushing down. But even on the worst days the rock bridge was like an ice box, down in the water there. He showed it to me after he was already getting pretty big.
The bridge wasn’t used anymore, even back then. Just a twenty footer on an old two-track out behind his Pop’s place on the ridge. We had a game we’d play, called Whistle Pig. The way Wolfgang’s arms were so long, you see, he could reach down from the truss and scoop me right out of the water. One-hand me just like that and lob me all the way over to the other side of the bridge like a football. Ass over elbow in the air like that. And I’d splash down, and let the water take me back under the bridge. I’d swim back and forth from one bank to the other so he might not know where I was gonna come out the other side, and he’d reach down blind and try to grab me. Me screaming and laughing and splashing, he had a pretty easy time of it. Not much of a game I guess, but we had fun.
Forty years is a long time, and it’s nothing. I figure that’s about how long its been since I saw Wolfgang last. A week that would be, maybe, after they tried to burn him up in the barn. I remember because it was the day after we were supposed to go see The Thing, down at the Plaza 2 in town. So it has been since 1982 that I’ve seen my friend.
He was my only friend back then, in the whole county. I was just a boy. We lived on a farm where mom grew up. That would be your grandma. Wolfgang lived with a man he called Pop. The two of them had a box-board house on the ridge that looked out on the farm and the creek and past that to Route 6. They kept goats up there in a white barn.
Pop was a short round man. A cast iron kettle, mom used to say. We all knew he wasn’t his real dad just from looking at him. For one Wolfgang was tall. Real tall. He had a growth spurt when he was six years old, he told me. The tallest in our school too, even taller than all the teachers except Principal Easter for a while. He was a tall lanky boy and his eyes were all the way black, like a crow’s eyes.
We made friends when we were in the second grade. The other kids didn’t like me on account of my stutter, him just on account of how big he was I guess. Of course he wasn’t even really grown yet. After we started sticking together they at least started treating him like any of the other boys, and if they ever picked a fight with me, they were dealing with him now too. He broke the bus driver’s arm once. One hit and he didn’t even try. Just an accident. We didn’t go looking for trouble, mostly we just wanted to be left alone and mostly folks did.
When school was done we were usually walking around somewhere. Sometimes on the train tracks, sometimes me on a bike. He and his Pop had a bike between the two of them but Wolfgang couldn’t ride it anymore because it made him uncomfortable, with his arms and legs and knees. We walked around exploring, talking about movies, or what kinds of things apples are made of, things like that. I loved those talks. Your grandma and grandpa took care of me but they weren’t talkers. They wanted me out of sight and out of mind. I got bored. But after I met Wolfgang I wasn’t bored anymore.
Sometimes on Sunday his Pop would squeeze us into his truck and take us into town for a movie. The theater is gone now but they had two screens, and they let us into just about anything because they couldn’t tell how old Wolfgang was. Only thing is, we had to sit in the back. He was just too big for that type of thing and folks couldn’t see over his head.
They brought the carnival into down one time, with booths and rides down in the parking lot at the Blue Hen. Well they had a photo tent and the man in the photo booth got one look at him and was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. He said he would take our picture for free. Wolfgang could hardly even fit in the booth, he had to hunch in through the curtain and hang his head next to me like a bird just so we could both be in the picture. He was good at the games though. Ring toss? Get out of here.
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***
When I turned 11 years old, your grandma and grandpa said I could have him down for supper for my birthday. That was the first time he got sick since I knew him. For my present, he brought me frame to put our picture in, from the carnival. It was from one of those balsa wood kits with push pin nails. Wolfgang was quiet during dinner, and then he had to leave before we had cake. I wondered, maybe it was some chicken skin he ate. I don’t think he was used to eating our type of food but it turned out that wasn’t anything to do with it.
Wolfgang missed school the next day. The day after that, he wasn’t at the bus stop either, and I was a little scared if I’m being honest. Right when the bus rolled up though, I saw him coming down there from the road up on the ridge. He was even bigger now. He wasn’t walking straight and he was steadying himself with his hand on the ground like a monkey. And I remember his knapsack was wrapped around two of his fingers, dragging in the dirt.
He told me he got sick on my birthday because he was still growing. Said they couldn’t get a doctor up there but they had a veterinarian come out and he said Wolfgang might keep going until he was twenty five years old, or maybe forever. Well, he was so tall already that he couldn’t fit through the door on the school bus and he had to go through the big door on the back. He kept growing for another whole month and at the end of it he couldn’t sit at his special desk at school. They had to crouch him in the back of the schoolhouse with his books and papers splayed out on the floor.
Once it was Springtime Wolfgang couldn’t ride the bus anymore. His Pop rigged up a platform on the back of his truck with a railing and a gate. Your grandma said I could ride to school with them if I wanted and so I did, up in the front seat next to his Pop and Wolfgang huddled up in the truck bed. On stormy days, we’d tie down a big canvas like a covered wagon and tuck him in to keep out the rain. On sunny days I could see him in the mirror, lolling his head back in the sun, smiling. I remember thinking: when I get older I’m gonna buy a dump truck and we’re gonna build a big seat back there for him and go for drives like that.
Soon it was Summer again and every day after chores were done, we could wander and play. Once it was good and hot we’d swim down at the bridge. He was getting tall enough he could be reaching up in bird nests and looking for eggs. I dared him to eat one and he liked it so much that he would just shake one out of a tree now and then, pop it in his mouth like a cherry ball.
We were on a walk near the paper mill once when he told me about his real dad. When Wolfgang was little, the two of them lived out in the forest on a hunting path. His dad didn’t work, he’s pretty sure, mostly just listened to music or drank. Didn’t care to be a dad either because he would take Wolfgang down to the basement sometimes, tie him up and just leave him. Days sometimes. His own son. Go out for a drink, go see a movie I don’t know, he said. If Wolfgang made a fuss about it he was liable to have something thrown at him. And if his dad came home and wasn’t feeling good, he’d pick up a hammer and pound some pop bottles on the wall right next to his hands, or his face, and did target practice on him. A real gun with real bullets.
He got tied up plenty of times, but target practice only happened twice. The second time, the forest ranger came, and that was around the time that Wolfgang met his Pop and he moved down here to the county. I asked him if he had a mom and he said I don’t know, probably.
***
We still went into town sometimes, but Wolfgang wasn’t as interested as he used to be. The Plaza 2 made us pay for the whole row of seats, or sometimes they just wouldn’t let us in. Oftentimes we couldn’t even walk down the sidewalk without strangers staring or hiding their children. We were two eleven year old kids, but that didn’t stop them from making rude comments or crossing the street.
One time when we were walking by the train station, a man in a business suit stepped out of the doors and when he noticed Wolfgang there, he just covered his eyes and froze up. Then the man made a certain sound, a bit like a yell when you’re out of breath. He started gasping until he had to lean against a lamp post and he threw up, right there on the sidewalk. That hurt Wolfgang’s feelings I think, so after that we didn’t go downtown a whole lot except after it was nighttime.
Instead, we stuck to the hills and Route 6 which was just as well. The summer was turning the trees that gold-green and the temperature coming down and we had begun making log forts out in the woods and fields. You see, Wolfgang could crack a whole limb right off the top of a tree now. He’d pull one down, and strip off all the sticks and leaves with his bare hand. I’d drag them into place and it was almost like real life lincoln logs. We could have made a whole little town out there.
So we kept busy. The light was still long into the evening and I was old enough my folks didn’t worry much as long as I was in before dark. One night we were putting a roof on top of a little saloon we had made. I was carrying a big strip of pine brush and getting ready to toss it up onto the roof, when the branch popped right in my face. Some of that mess got in my eye and I could hardly see. And quick after that, Wolfgang was howling next to me like a way I’d never heard him do now that he was more grown. It was a terrible. The second worst sound I’ve ever heard. After I opened my eyes again I saw blood on him. I said, what happened. Then another pop came out of the trees and got him in the hand. We were being shot at.
Now I know all this must sound far fetched but I am not shitting when I say I picked up my hatchet—one I wasn’t even supposed to have—and I dead charged into where those bullets had come from. I don’t know what my plan was but I ran and ran until I found a deer blind. A corrugated metal box pinned up in a tree with a ladder. A man and his buddy were up there, orange vests, and they were laughing. Well I climbed that ladder and started hacking that thing against the door to get in and see what was so funny.
I almost had it open when Wolfgang got there. He must have knocked me off the ladder by accident because all I remember was waking on the ground and the deer blind was there next to me, ripped clean off the tree. Wolfgang was there next to it and he was still howling. Crying, I guess. Those hunters were inside there hollering and I thought, he is gonna peel the lid off that thing and we’re gonna teach these boys some kind of lesson until he feels better. But what happened instead is he just wrapped his hands around that metal box and he crushed it like a can of pop.
Now I swear that I—it happened quick enough that I couldn’t even tell him no. It just happened. He was just there on his elbows and knees shaking. And the noise that was coming from inside that box was the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I couldn’t listen to that anymore or his crying, so I picked up my hatchet and ran home and got sick.
I didn’t go back to see. I couldn’t even leave my room for about a whole day. Your grandma knew something had happened but bless her, the afternoon after that when I finally went out through the kitchen door, she didn’t ask me anything. I walked up to Pop’s place on the ridge, knocked on the door, and nobody was home except the goats running around. I checked the barn too but the door was locked. Shook it once and I could hear Wolfgang breathing in there. He wasn’t ready to talk, so I just waited with the goats.
Around the time the sun was going down, he opened up. He told me he went back out to the forest and that crumple of metal was still there and the man inside was dead. He didn’t know what to do, so he picked up the whole thing and walked it down the train tracks to the mill pond and dropped it in. And after that, he went back through the forest and knocked down all our log houses to cover our tracks that we’d been out there. I told him, there were two, what about his hunting buddy who was in there? And Wolfgang started to cry again.
His Pop came home then, and said he was cleaning up messes and I had to get out of there. I didn’t want to but didn’t know what else to do. I wish I’d had something to give him, like our picture we took together in that little wood frame. I don’t know. But I just told him I’d come around tomorrow and see if he wanted to go for one last swim since the weather was starting to turn. Then I left.
***
A lot happened after that and I can’t keep it all straight. The police came once, I think. Asked me about what happened, I said it was an accident. I don’t know what Wolfgang told them. A few nights later, I was in my bedroom and saw Pop out on the road arguing with a man driving a city truck. Your grandma wouldn’t let me go out there but I knew they were trying to take Wolfgang away in that truck. Pop blocked the road with a horse trailer and was just about ready to throw fists before the man finally left. That’s around the time my folks were first talking about leaving, too.
That Sunday after church we were out at the Blue Hen shopping for school clothes. We were on the way home when we saw the smoke, all the way down on Route 6. A whole cloud of it, coming off the ridge. Your grandpa cursed, only time I ever heard that out of him. A fire truck was already rolling up there when we pulled in, and I ran after to see what happened. Pop’s was empty. Truck was gone, trailer was gone, goats were gone. The barn was half black with fire and the roof was sagging but it didn’t look like Wolfgang was in there when it happened.
That night I thought, maybe there was a note. Maybe Pop and Wolfgang were hiding out and they left me a note, and I’d go look for it. Well, whoever started the fire came back before dawn and finished the job. Burned down the house too. That was enough for your grandma and grandpa to pull stakes and move us down state, and I didn’t see Wolfgang again after that.
***
I hadn’t been back in a long time, until your aunty’s funeral took me up that way last summer. I miss her just like you do but truth be told, I was looking forward to going back. Don’t know why I never went before but I think about that place all the time. Running around with him.
It’s curious the way you remember a place in your head and it’s perfect. It just makes sense. But you go back and it just keeps changing. Places don’t care what you remember about them. The Blue Hen’s gone. The Plaza 2, I thought I remembered where it was but it’s a costume shop now. Drove out Route 6 and they put in a Super Store, right before the turnoff. Our house is gone, of course. I went up the ridge and they put a cell phone tower there, about where Wolfgang’s barn used to be. Nothing stops changing.
There wasn’t anybody around up there so I took a sidle over the fence and went down the two track through the woods. Long way. Longer than I remember. That was nice. I would say, the sound of the bugs and the birds, that sound is about the same as it was back then. The sun felt the same. Smell of the brush was the same. And if you can believe it, there’s still some of our lincoln log houses out there, even a few I don’t remember making. They’re all grown over or falling down, but they’re there.
The rock bridge finally gave out. Just a big pile of rocks in the water now. It must have dammed up the creek, because the two track was all flooded out into a boggy little pond. I couldn’t tell you why but I took off my shoes and socks and waded out in there before I left. Just to see how it feels, I guess.
Summer was hotter back then but down by the bridge it’s still cold. And there’s frogs in there now, too. Must’ve been a hundred of them. Never found a frog in the creek when we were boys, I would’ve remembered that. And that is to say, sometimes the changes are ok. I watched them for a while. Some getting sun, all gathered up on logs. Some big ones kicking around in the water by me with their long legs. They didn’t seem to mind me. Just looking.
Now, you just sit tight for a minute longer sweetheart and I’m going to try one more time looking for that photo.
Garrett Wenger
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Garrett Wenger (he/him) is a writer based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who uses poetry, fiction, and film to reach others in ways that aren't easily nurtured face-to-face. He studied Creative Writing at Western Michigan University, and has participated in a handful of poetry and fiction workshops around the state, including the dearly missed Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters. His work has been featured in Now That's What I Call Alternative Literature, Wizards in Space Magazine, and The Laureate.