Carl vs. the Nazis: Ch 2 Lost

"Carl vs. the Nazis: Ch 1 Up the Creek" 
Lost in the Forest

Joe and I inspected the pool that fed Beaver Brook. We weren’t disappointed.
Beaver Brook was born of a deep spring pond in a small clearing surrounded by thick pine. The water was clear and cold, bubbling in seven places from a sandy bottom. Granite stones encased the pool. Crudely quarried stones lined the other two sides to form the pool. The water rushed through the mouth of a stone carved to look like a face to create a waterfall at the pond’s edge. The cheeks of the face were puffed out like a cherub’s, and the eyebrows raised comically. The limestone blocks were decorated with carvings of sheaves of wheat and clusters of grapes.
Best of all were the rope swing and trees that overhung the pond. My favorite jump was from the branch of a yellow birch. We had to climb by our hands like gibbons along the branch, suspended twenty feet over the rocks, before releasing and tumbling into the pond below. We spend the rest of the afternoon and the early part of the evening flying into the water. We tried to see how deep we could stick arms, legs and sand into the bubbling bottom. We did not notice how late it was getting until the storm moved in.
The air grew soupy, hot and stagnant, but we were having so much fun we ignored the change in the weather. When the clouds from the southwest blocked the setting sun, we knew we had stayed too late. Walking through a brook on a hot sunny day was a joy. Following it back through a dark pine forest in a storm would be impossible.
“Let’s look around here,” said Joe. “Those old people must have gone somewhere. We must be near a road, maybe there’s even a shelter.”
“I walked all around the pond trying to catch up with them,” I said. “All I found was a ragged deer trail. If we head off, we’ll probably just end up wandering the woods or lost in the swamp. All the land around here is undeveloped for hundreds of acres. We’d never find our way out.”
Joe paused to think. We heard faint thunder, rhythmic and increasingly loud, the footsteps of an approaching giant.
“Let’s find some decent fir trees and see if we can’t build a lean-to,” he suggested. “After the storm, we’ll build a fire to dry us off and keep the bugs away. We’re going to have to spend the night.”
I nodded. I had no better ideas, and at least this would give us something to do.
We split up, staying in sight of the pond. I found a fir tree and began hacking the branches and piling them, while Joe gathered study sticks to build a frame for the lean-to. While cutting the higher branches, I noticed a huge white pine that seemed to have boards nailed to its branches.
I stepped away from the fir tree to have a clearer look at the huge pine. Where the trunk of the pine forked into three branches forty feet above the ground was nestled a tree house. Like the buildings of the nearby boys camp, it was solid. It had a tilted wooden roof covered with tin, tall wooden sides, and screened windows covered on with red and white striped canvas.
I called Joe over and we climbed.
We have always been expert climbers, but this one was a little scary. We had to jump to grab the first branch, do a pull-up and swing up our feet. From there, the branches were close together, but were frail and rotting. We tried to distribute our weight evenly, never placing all our weight on one branch. We tried not to look down. The most frightening part was climbing the rungs up the trunk through the trap door on the bottom of the house. There were no branches and the trunk was too thick to cling to, so we had to trust ourselves entirely to the rotting rungs.
The entire resort, Bachland, comprised three camps: one for boys, one for girls and one for music, a hotel and several smaller inns and guest houses. Bachland, named for the German composer, was founded by Lutheran German Americans. They built the Pocono resort as a place where they could speak German and be themselves after their persecution in World War I. They were a meticulous and practical group. They were fond of saying, “If it’s worth doing it’s work doing right.” I never understood that saying. I mean, trying to do something, even if it doesn’t come out perfect, seems better that doing nothing. Anyway, all the buildings were sturdy and well-stocked, waiting for their new owner, if anyone ever bought the resort. Surrounding the camps were several outdoor campsites with benches and carefully tended grounds and fireplaces. They even dug and framed underground tunnels for fun.
After the resort went belly-up, the bank tried to maintain the buildings while looking for a buyer. All the buildings were stocked with furniture, pianos, canned food, dusty postcards in rusty sales racks, and even with uniforms hung neatly in mothballed closets, ready for a service staff that would never return.
It did not surprise us that the tree house was in such good shape. The walls were framed with studs and covered with plywood. The floor, about ten feet by eight, was neatly fitted plywood, supported with a frame like an outdoor deck. A half-inch thick plywood board covered the entrance. A steel footlocker yielded dry blankets, bomb-shelter survival biscuits, a jar of peanut butter and a kerosene storm lantern. With the lantern glowing and the canvas tucked around the windows, it could have been a
typical bedroom in a summer cottage.
Except for the swaying and the noise.
It seemed God in all his wrath was trying to thresh us from the forest. The peals caused the tree house to vibrate like a timpani, and the close, frequent lightning lit the house like a strobe. We turned away from each other rather than see our fear. The tree house rocked and twisted, and all of the boards creaked. At any moment, they could rip apart, sending us tumbling through the branches to the forest floor. We would lie there, helplessly injured or dead. Would anyone find us? We had walked up the brook, and left no trail or scent for search dogs. The only clue was the raft. They would probably just search the lake for our bodies, like those people who disappeared long ago that Joe was telling me about.
From wind or lightning we heard trees rip and crash in the nearby darkness, and prayed it wasn’t our own tree. We then realized a tree house is not the best place to be in a thunderstorm.
Compared to other kids our age, we were not easily frightened. Dark forests, ghost stories, swamps and large, abandoned building did not bother us; not too much. But that storm scared us. We recited every prayer we knew, and when we finished both of those, we sang bits of hymns, yammering, “Yum de dum dee,” for all the lyrics we did not know. To this day I believe our singing frightened that storm away, because it soon blew out leaving the cheerful light of dusk on the horizon followed by clouds of stars in the Milky Way.
We ate peanut butter and biscuits, rolled up in the rough army blankets like burritos and went to sleep.
I slept soundly through most of the night, but the sound of singing woke me before dawn: hoarse, flat, and regrettably enthusiastic harmony singing. I first thought it was the remnant of a dream or a wild animal’s love screech and rolled over, but the singing continued.
I peered from the window and again saw those strange old people swimming and singing the pool, which gleamed like a jewel in the moonlight. Here was another chance to speak to them. I did not try to wake Joe. He loved his sleep, and was certain to say something nasty and loud if I disturbed him. I climbed down the tree, quiet as a squirrel, and crept slowly toward the pond. I stepped in the clearing and they smiled at me, before disappearing with a sudden rustle and a short burst of laughter.
I did not hurry back to the tree house. The night was cool, but not bitter. I looked into the still pond and saw the moon smiling back. I slipped off my clothes and jumped in the water. Fireflies flashed as they darted among the trees. The crickets provided the accompaniment to a lovesick whippoorwill’s plaintive song while the stream gurgled with cheerful indifference. I floated on my back and gazed into stars. The sky glittered and every few seconds a shooting star went by. The earth hurtled through the universe and the night sky was my windshield. Never would I feel so free again. The constellation Orion moved above the trees to remind me it was late in the night and late in the summer. Suddenly I grew cold and reluctantly climbed up to the tree house and slept.
The best part of sleeping in the forest is waking up. In Sunday school, we learned about how, “All the sons of the morning sang together,” when the world was created. I think of that whenever a rowdy choir of birds sing me awake. The morning was bright and warm. The tree house swayed in a breeze that carried the scent of clear air, pine and fern.
“Verwie doch, du bis so schon,” I mumbled, looking out over the forest and the pond.
“Talking to yourself?” said Joe, who was doing pull-ups outside of the tree house, hanging on to the edge of the roof.
“It means, ‘Stay, thou art so fair!’ Don’t worry, I wasn’t talking to you. It’s from play about a guy called Faust.”
“Never heard of it.” Joe swung in his feet, landed inside and started his pushups.
“It’s an old story, a play. This guy thinks that life is a big joke; that anything you really like is just going to disappear, the way fog goes away from the lake when the sun comes out. There’s nothing to hang on to.”
“So?”
“So he makes a deal with the Devil.”
Joe began to look interested.
“He tells the Devil that he can have his soul if he gives Faust anything he wants: money, women, even the ability to fly. The Devil will get Faust’s soul only if Faust is stupid enough to get attached to things and say, “Stay, Stay, for thou art fair.”
“He has to say those exact words?”
“Yeah.”
“In German or English?”
“German, I guess. That’s what he spoke.”
“Sound like a pretty good deal to me,” said Joe. “Who would talk like that screwball? I don’t even know German.”
“Anyway,” I said, climbing onto the roof and looking at the lake in the distance, “The Devil tries to trick him by having him meet beautiful girls so he will fall in love and give them that line. You know, tell them that he doesn’t want them to go ever go away.”
“They must have been cute,” said Joe.
“Yeah. I guess they were. One was named Gretchen
“Yuck.”
The other was Helen of Troy.”
“Hey, I’ve heard of her. But I’m confused. Wasn’t Helen of Troy in that really old Greek story about the guys hiding in the hollow hobby horse?”
“Yeah, but Faust asked the Devil to bring her back from Hell so he could have a hot girlfriend.”
“Oh,” said Joe, nodding. “I guess that makes sense. So did he get burned by his hot girlfriend from hell?”
“The girl didn’t make him say it. One fine day, just like today, he looked out on some beautiful land he owned and said it. Demons appeared and dragged him screaming into the fires of Hell.
“Cool,” said Joe with his mouth full of peanut butter. “Do you want a cracker? I love peanut butter. Unless it’s crunchy. I keep imagining those little crunchy bits are something nasty, like tiny beetles. Getting back to that guy getting dragged to Hell, that is one twisted story line. Why were you thinking about this stuff?”
“I was just thinking about the morning and how nice it is here. Wouldn’t it be great if it was always summer and we were always young, with no one to bother us? It’s funny. I used to think getting older is great. You know? Getting to do whatever we want, driving and having a job. But now more things seem to bother me. I hardly ever stop worrying, about whether I can do what other people want me to, about whether my hair’s right, about whether my clothes are dorky. Little kids don’t care about these things, and they’re happy. So on those rare moments when I realize I’ve just forgotten about myself and I’m liking the world as it is, I start wishing I could stop time: just stay in that moment. And that spoils it, because I know it’s impossible. Maybe that’s why so many people get drunk or high. It doesn’t seem to be doing them any good, though. When we were little we never thought about time or worried about the future, or growing old. I don’t always like what time is bringing.”
“What about girls?” replied Joe.
“What girls?” I replied sullenly. “Jeeze! I wake up one day as a teenager, with a scrawny body and a face full of pimples. All the girls our age that we used to hang out with a couple of years ago won’t even talk to us anymore. They just hang out with other girls, or older guys who are better looking and have money. In other words, we are the bottom of the totem pole, the part stuck underground. In the meantime, we’re so full of these stupid hormones it’s easy for them to make us public fools and abuse us.”
“Only if we’re lucky,” said Joe cheerfully. “Anyway, our time will come. But no girl’s going to like you if you keep talking like Eeyore.”
He tried to change the subject. “That weird pond with those old people; it’s out in the middle of nowhere, and I’ve never seen old people move like that,” he said. “Someone went through a lot of trouble to carve those decorations on the stones. You don’t suppose it’s some kind of fountain of youth?”
“If it is, I’m going to stay away from it so my face can clear up.”
“Don’t be a wise guy, and stop feeling sorry for yourself!” Joe snapped. “Those fogies were doing some great acrobatics. It was strange.”
“All right,” I paused to take his question seriously. “Those guys were in great shape for their age. But they looked old. Wouldn’t a fountain of youth make them look young? It would sure have been easier on our eyes.”
“Maybe it just makes them young on the inside, so they can do things that other old people can’t.”
“So do you suppose it’s sort of the opposite of plastic surgery? Instead of looking young and feeling old, they’re young on the inside and old on the outside?”
Joe shrugged. “Maybe we’ll run into them later. I’m dying to find out. I sure want to be in their shape when I’m that age. I wouldn’t mind being in that shape now,” he said with a chuckle.
Joe didn’t really need to be in better shape. He was a champion cross country runner, and lifted weights every day. I, on the other hand, was so skinny that people were always offering me parts of their lunch.
“Let’s get some exercise now by heading home,” I said.

"Carl vs. The Nazis Ch. 3 Dr. Schmidt"