Tishomingo Burn Ban [GIFT LINK]

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The stranger invaded our camp just before dark. It was me and my eight-year-old son Fisher out there, alone together in a remote corner of the primitive area of Tishomingo State Park—a rocky woodland in the northeast corner of Mississippi, foot of the foothills of Appalachia, with the leaves burnished orange and brown on a Friday in early October.    

The pickup barreled through the parking lot where we’d left our old Subaru, blew past the “No Motorized Vehicle” sign, and came jouncing toward us, dodging trees and fallen logs until it rested in a cloud of dust a few feet from our tent.

Some over-zealous campground host, I assumed, come to introduce himself and make sure we hadn’t lit any fires.   

That was the tail end of a long, hot dry spell. Not a drop of rain for going on two months. The forecast was calling for showers over the weekend, but they hadn’t arrived yet. Until they did, campfires were forbidden.     

Maybe that’s why the park was strangely empty for a weekend in fall. That morning, it had felt like a good omen: We’d passed a few rust-gnawed RVs backed into the established sites down by the lake, which had receded so far that the fishing piers stood on cracked ground. The air had a sour, muddy reek as if all the fish had died of heat stroke. Ours was the only vehicle in the primitive lot, ours the only tent in sight, a fact that pleased me.

I’ve known social campers. I’ve always been a backcountry guy myself. This love was a big part of what I wanted to pass on—the solace of that contact with the more-than-human—but Fisher was eight, asthmatic, and had never shouldered a pack. The primitive area seemed like a place to start.    

We spent the afternoon rambling, hiking a big loop that crossed and recrossed Bear Creek, wound up through an abandoned homestead, then back around stands of hickory and oak, without meeting another hiker.

All down the afternoon, I’d felt the hard knotty rope in my chest uncoil more and more. It was good to be in the woods. Good to be alone in the woods with my son. There were things I needed to say to him that I hadn’t yet found words for. I loved him with a big aching love that could gut punch me on occasion. At the same time, when I looked at him, I couldn’t help seeing myself at his age. And I’d hated myself at his age, plagued as I was by a scrupulosity borne of a rigid fundamentalist upbringing—an unattainable standard of moral and bodily perfection. I’d grown up feeling weak, ugly, and inadequate, riddled with unseemly desires, petty resentments, and unsightly pockets of fat. I didn’t want him to feel like me. Didn’t want him to be like me. I wanted him to be better but wasn’t sure how to help without passing on my old compunction. I’d been doing some work, learning to love and accept the boy I’d been, and I wanted to offer him this and more. But I could not, for the life of me, think where to begin.

A campfire would have helped. What is it about a good fire? The sight and smell seems to invoke some primal impulse for connection which in turn has a way of deepening the currents of conversation. Or maybe it’s just easier to talk when you have something else to stare at.

The thin blue flame of a camp stove was a poor substitute but would have to suffice. We ate our chili, and then, as dusk deepened, I stirred hot chocolate and improvised s’mores, roasting our marshmallows over the gas flame. “Sorry there’s no fire,” I said, though Fish hadn’t complained.

He grew thoughtful, nodding, then pointed out that at least we’d be able to see the stars more clearly. He tipped his head back, and I followed his gaze to the night sky, where the first pinpricks of light had begun to appear.

Guided by those stars, I was working up to a story about how difficult it had been for me at that age—how alone I’d felt and how I was here for him—when the stranger’s headlights appeared, blinding me and making shipwreck of whatever I might have said. He might as well have parked his truck between us.

As he climbed out, I called a greeting.

Twitchy, the man kept glancing over but said nothing, only lowered the tailgate and rolled out a sleeping bag in the bed.

The light was poor and my eyes were dazzled with spots from the headlights, but I could see he was clean-cut, mid-thirties, sporting a lime-green polo tucked into chinos.

I asked Fish if he wanted another s’more. More hot chocolate? But he was preoccupied now, too, watching the man.

After he’d inflated an air mattress, the stranger approached and began to make stilted small talk. Some weather we’ve been having, right? You believe how hot and dry it’s been? We could sure use the rain. Even factoring for the dim lighting, his face had a hard-to-see quality. A vagueness about the eyes and mouth. I couldn’t quite bring him into focus but noted he was older than I’d thought, hard-worn with deep crow’s feet, hollow eyes, and some rough, puckered scarring along his jaw, as if someone had gone at him with a cheese grater.

“Nice night, anyway,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. A low crescent moon. A billion stars with a skein of clouds gathering. “Beautiful.”

The man grimaced, then turned to Fisher. “This your father?” he asked.

Fish looked at me, nodded yes.

“Good-looking kid,” he said, keeping his eyes on the boy like we were discussing a horse he’d considered buying.

“Cocoa?” I said, wishing more than ever for that fire. A focal point, a gathering place to swap stories about where we’d come from and where we might be going. “Or tea?”

“Pass.”

I killed the gas flame and asked where he was from, but he didn’t answer.

He stood clenching and unclenching his fists, as if he’d come to deliver some shattering news and couldn’t quite find the words. Then, in a rush, he asked: had we been washed in the precious blood of the Lamb?

I balked. The simplest answer was yes, but the question felt as intrusive as his arrival. As I hesitated to give it to him straight, he began to rephrase the question in various ways: Had we invited the Lord into our hearts? Had we been born again? If we died tonight, would we spend eternity in heaven with Jesus or in the fiery torments of hell with Satan and all his minions?

I considered asking how this was his business—or maybe teasing him a little. Saying something about our friend Jesús and how he’d been tutoring us in Spanish. But in the end, not wanting to provoke him or prolong the exchange, I only said, yes. Yes, we did know the Lord. Fairly well, as a matter of fact. I was, at the time of this encounter, ordained as a Ruling Elder in a Presbyterian Church, where I’d also taught Bible classes, written liturgies, and developed curricula for small groups.

I thought that would be the end of it, but the stranger appeared dubious, even a little distressed. “Presbyterian?” He scowled. “Where’s the church?”

“Jackson,” I said.

His perplexed frown stretched taut, as if I’d said we hailed from Gomorrah.

I almost felt bad for him then. Here he’d come prepared to save our souls, and I’d gone and ignored the script.

The more I affirmed my faith, the more suspicious the man became, as if he hadn’t come to share the good news but to catch us in a damnable lie. As the interrogation persisted, I couldn’t help thinking of how Flannery O’Connor once described the South as a Christ-haunted place. I love Jesus, but, good Lord, his ostensible followers can be irksome and even sinister at times. Clearly unconvinced by my profession of faith but out of ideas—or maybe just weary with the effort—the stranger finally walked the three steps back to his camp site.

For lack of a better idea, I relit the stove and was adjusting the flame when the man returned, holding one hand behind his back.

With a flourish he brought out a cross fashioned of two sticks and thin binding wire. This he presented to Fish, then added that he’d have a big surprise waiting in the morning. With that, he turned and walked away, into the woods and out of sight.

It was getting cold. Not freezing, but chilly enough to make it unpleasant to be out with no fire to warm and illuminate our camp.

I ushered Fish into the tent, read him to sleep, and tried to rest but heard a heavy scraping and looked out to see the man, rustling in the thick underlayer of dry leaves, pacing, approaching our camp and moving away repeatedly. He had a stiff lurching gait that made me think of a windup toy.

Maybe he was only restless, tormented by the same sort of anxious thoughts that left me alone by day then ambushed me in the small hours between midnight and four a.m., but I couldn’t settle down with him traipsing around out there and sat up the long night, listening. At irregular intervals there came the sharp crack of a stick snapping.

Shortly before dawn, a rumble of thunder sounded, and then a gentle rain began to fall on the dry woods with a sound like breath. Autumn had arrived on a gust of wind.

A moment later, the footsteps ceased. A door opened, then popped shut, the starter churned and caught, the truck drove away. Listening to the hum of the engine recede, I felt the tension draining from my body and nodded off at last.    

Awake a couple hours later, I unzipped the tent flap to find three crosses, similar to the one the stranger had presented us with earlier. They were lined up outside the tent door, so close I could reach them. As I climbed out into the gray of a false dawn, I saw that a fourth leaned against the camp stove, a fifth at the base of the shagbark hickory where we’d hung our food bag. I gathered these into a heap and was heating water when I caught sight of a sixth across the way, free standing with its base pushed into the thick duff.

A while later, when Fish emerged, I moved to hide the crosses I’d collected. He’d already spotted the one I’d left standing, however, and walked over to pluck it like a flower. Then he stood looking around until he’d spotted another, balanced in the crotch of a young loblolly. Standing on tiptoe to reach it, he asked if this was the surprise the man had promised.     

I said I thought it must be.

He began moving around, searching for others. “There.” He pointed. “And there. And there.” He orbited the camp, discovering cross after cross, ranging from a few inches to a few feet in height. Some pressed into the ground, others propped against trunks, stumps, and snags, others balanced atop branches, the lot of them arranged in a wide ellipse to form a perimeter.

Twenty-three crosses in all. A regular scavenger hunt. Had all that been premeditated? Did he keep the wire in his truck for this purpose? Was this why he’d pulled in so close? What was it all for?

As we ate our breakfast of oatmeal and oranges, we talked about how offensive and off-putting the man had been. Or Fish listened as I groused, pointing out that the guy hadn’t even introduced himself or asked our names. How he’d basically accused me of lying in his refusal to take yes for an answer; how he’d neglected to show any care or concern.

Fish mulled it over for a while, then said he felt sorry for the guy. “I mean, he seemed kind of lonesome, didn’t he?”

I considered the question for a long while. In a way, I haven’t stopped considering it, telling the story again and again, trying to understand something, to make it make sense. Even now, I find it tempting to dismiss the stranger as the uncomplicated villain of the narrative—difficult not to consider those crosses as menacing threats or warnings. At the same time, I don’t want to present him as a caricature or a trope on which to project my own evangelical angst. Odd as he seemed, he was a human, a fellow image-bearer, as we say in our tradition, and thus deserving of, at least, the benefit of some doubt. Who could say what hopes or hurts he might have carried into this encounter? Had I shown any interest in his life? It’s possible he meant well. Possible he only came to us as a hungry beggar pointing the way to bread. Possible that, having failed to convey that in words, he’d resorted to this other, more symbolic gesture. To be honest, this option bothers me as much as the first, for different reasons. How does the saying go? If you spot it, you got it. Is that why I’ve felt so reluctant to extend grace to the man? Knowing I’d have to offer myself the same, being Christ-haunted too, I suppose, though I have also been Christ-held at times, as on that Saturday in fall, alone again with my son, enfolded into the Beloved Community of Creation.    

I regarded Fish, who looked older, wiser, than he had only a moment before. And suddenly all I’d felt so desperate to say seemed far less important than the fact of our being here together. “Yes,” I said. “I think he must have been very lonely.”  

This story originally appeared in Issue No. 02 of Southlands.